CSBA in the News

The service officials detailed a possible “OA-X” for solely permissive environments, according to Mark Gunzinger, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. OA-X would be a low-end, low-cost, non-developmental aircraft meant to augment the Air Force’s existing light attack capabilities, he said… 

However, former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman, who has also served in other senior positions in the State and Defense departments, said in a telephone interview that U.S.- Turkish relations may be in for “a bumpy ride.” Edelman is especially concerned about anti-American rhetoric in Turkey alleging that the U.S. had a role in the coup. U.S. Ambassador John Bass on July 18 responded to those allegations. “Some news reports — and, unfortunately, some public figures — have speculated that the United States in some way supported the coup attempt,” he said. “This is categorically untrue, and such speculation is harmful to the decades-long friendship between two great nations.”

“Over the last 6­7 years and now more so after the coup plot, literally hundreds of general officers have been removed from the system,” says Eric Edelman, who served as the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy from 2005­-09.”

A directed energy weapon could also be mounted on an MH-60 Black Hawk, he noted. Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said based on the relatively small size of a helicopter the laser would likely have between 15 and 30 kilowatts of power. “That would pack a pretty good punch” at short ranges against a soft target, he said…

“The danger here is this could spiral out of control and turn into a full-blown civil war,” Mr Eric Edelman, a former US ambassador to Turkey and former leading Pentagon official under president George W. Bush, said on Friday.

Eric Edelman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2003 to 2005, told me that when he served at the embassy, he never heard from Erdogan's government any complaints about Gulen's status as an asylum seeker in the U.S. “In those days they were thick as thieves,” he said.